


a dumb screenshot of youth

by fiddleogold_againstyoursoul



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Swimming, Touching, allusions to sex, talking about feelings and stuff, they're in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-17 18:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13665174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiddleogold_againstyoursoul/pseuds/fiddleogold_againstyoursoul
Summary: Maybe some things weren't meant to be perfect. Maybe perfect just meant okay. Meant you could keep going like this forever.





	a dumb screenshot of youth

**Author's Note:**

> This is set a few years after where canon left off, where both Dante and Ari are twenty-somethings with jobs that are not explicitly referenced. They live together. They're together. Boyfriends, husbands, partners, whatever floats your boat.

I didn't always understand Dante. His easy laughs and sad, soulful eyes. His obsession with shoes. Sometimes he came home from work and propped up his feet on the counter. Bare feet, I mean, who goes barefoot to work? I used to ask him about it. Dante, doesn't your boss say anything? He always laughed. "No, Ari," he always said. Always the laugh in his voice. Always hand on my arm, hip, or fingers resting on my cheek, like he couldn't bear to not be touching me at any moment we could be together. Like a statement. Knowing Dante, it probably was. "She understands an artist needs his freedom."

The answer never changed. I responded differently: oh, so barefoot means free now? I don't know how comfortable I am with that. Artists were just hungry hopers.

"You just don't understand art," he said to the last one, rubbing circles into my wrist with his thumb. His other thumb was on my bottom lip, which was the reason I'd left it at that. "Every body is a canvass. Me going barefoot, that's just another way of dressing it." I loved him for that. I loved him so much it made my chest ache. Hours later found us lying underneath the fan in our small bedroom, limbs stretched to the fullest in cramped space. Sweat collecting between our bodies. 

Touching. He touched me a lot. He touched everyone else a lot: hugged friends, shook hands. Rocked his new toddler of a brother in his arms. Greeted his parents with kisses, walked straight up to them and pressed his lips to their cheeks so affectionately it made me jealous. He was quick to beckon me close after, reintroducing me as if I didn't see Sam and Soledad every other day. That was so Dante: contagious warmth, enveloping me in the same easy way he did everyone else. Same, but different. The semantics of the disparity are better hinted at than explicitly described. (Thumb on lip, dragging. Lip on lip, mouth moving over mouth, tongue touching teeth. Mouth on cheek. Mouth on jaw. Mouth on ear, teeth tugging lobe. Hand on thigh, warm. Breath on skin. Nails on flesh. Fingers through fingers. Cheek to cheek, breathing. His chest. The slope of his back. The arch of his body. _Every body is a canvass._ Toes curl. I kiss him a little harder. Till we're both breathless.)

"How was work?" I asked him once after a long, gruelling day, reaching out to smudge the charcoal on his cheek. He smiled. He told me about how his coworker fell asleep at their desk, the animations they'd been working on still lighting up the screen. He told me about the  _pendejos_ who'd shouted at him while he was walking home today. He'd shouted back. My fingers curled when he told me this. I was still thinking of Daniel, and an alley, and Julian. Dante seemed to sense my anger. He always could, no matter how deep I buried it. It was like I couldn't hide anything from him. I thought he might say something, cry, maybe -- Dante still cried so much -- but he just wrapped his hand around my fist. His fingers were soft. 

"It's okay, Ari," he said. His voice was as soft as his fingers. It was hard, too, if you listened closely. Some part of my anger was shared. "I'm okay."

I didn't say anything for a while. And then he said, "Let's go swimming."

That surprised me. "Swimming?" I asked. "As in, in the pool?"

"As in, in the pool."

His voice was cheerful again. I couldn't understand it. Dante flitted from emotion to emotion like a small, quick bird. He was so good at doing that. "I outgrew my trunks," I said, careful to not let my thoughts spill into my tone. If Dante was an open book I was hieroglyphics on a wall: there, just unreadable. Years older, years more unknowable. Probably forever unknowable. "We haven't been to the pool in months." A year, maybe. Time was weirder now that we weren't boys in the summer sun. Good weird, but sometimes it felt like it was all slipping away too fast. I didn't like thinking about that. Which person spends too much time on that, the passage of time? What a boring person you'd have to be.

"You can wear mine. I have another pair." He didn't respond to the time comment. Again, boring. "C'mon, Ari, I miss it so much."

It was pleading. His hand was on my hip now, and we moved like that till I felt the wall against my back. His body was long, wide, bony, like a cage. He was so beautiful. I didn't tell him so: big enough head on him as it was. I kissed him, instead, and that seemed to be enough. He bit me a little into the kiss, like he was angry at something. Not me, though. Angry at the world. And people like us, we had every goddamn right to be angry. We kept standing there and making out like a couple of teenagers till he finally peeled himself off of me and grinned and said, "We'd better go before it gets dark, huh?" and that was that. I put on his trunks. They were a little small, but so were the ones he was wearing. We shed shirt and shoes -- the latter at least on my part -- and bribed the lifeguard to let us in, even though they were locking up the place because it was getting late. Nothing a little  _billete_ wouldn't fix.

The pool was warm. Dante leapt right in, a fish in his element -- and not long ago he'd been a bird -- and the splash rippled the water at the edges, too. I dipped my toes in, content just to sit and wash, before a pair of hands closed around my ankles and tugged me in. There was laughter, raucous. Kind of childish. We wrestled in the water, tooth and nail and foot and fist, and were both gasping for breath when we surfaced. Dante put his arms around my neck like we were dancing. Droplets shone on his brown skin. "I love you," he said.

"I love you, too," I said. He pretended to look surprised, which made me hit him. He tried to look angry at that. And then he hoisted me onto his shoulders and paddled around the pool, shouting. I kept waiting for someone to hear the ruckus, come yell at us, but nobody came. That was weird. It was a good weird. I clung onto Dante and tugged at the loose, wet strands of his hair. He grunted. "We should do this more often," I said, not sure what I was saying. "Like we used to." Two things Dante loved: swimming and Ari. He should've loved Ari less and swimming a lot more, if the latter made him so happy. Not that I was complaining. "I mean, we both have work, but --"

"We can come down on weekends," he said, reaching up and wrapping his fingers around one of my ankles. It was a soft gesture. Kind of intimate. "Summers. We can invite your parents."

"How about  _your_ parents?"

"Oh, you don't have to invite them. They're bringing Joaquin anyways. Little bastard's gonna be a greater swimmer than me."

We were far from boyhood, but the word  _bastard_ still seemed to bring some secret thrill to Dante. It was endearing.

"What's he like?" 

"Joaquin?" Dante paused. His hand was warm. My face felt warm, too.  _Move it a little higher?_ That was indecent, wasn't it? Some good Catholic Mexican boy. _Man._ I meant man. Sometimes it was hard to remember. "He's so little. Tiny. I'm scared I'll drop him every time I pick him up." His body rumbled when he laughed, and I felt it pass through me in turn. "He likes swimming. He likes football, or at least tolerates it enough to watch the games."

"He does?"

"Yeah, flips the channels and everything. Mostly I think it's to get away from all the crap programs Dad likes."

"You can't all be artists."

"No," he said, mournfully.

"I like him," I declared. I think Dante was smiling when he said he was glad. Then my small dumb brain couldn't catch up with my big fat mouth and I ruined it: "Do you think he'll like boys too?" There was a long, pregnant pause. I grimaced. "Sorry. Bad joke."

"It's okay," he said. We started moving again, slowly cutting through the pool. Creasing the surface as we did. I wondered what the water looked like, lapping against his chest. All the fine hairs on it like a carpet. "Statistically that's unlikely." I relaxed. It was fine. Or at least he wanted to pretend like it was, and I'd let him for now.

"Oh, so we're supposed to believe in statistics now?"

"We kind of defy statistics, don't we?"

"Kind of."

"Couple of Mexican faggots who love swimming."

"Don't say that word," I said. _An alley._  Dante fell silent again, and I felt bad about snapping. He was so nonchalant about these things. It bothered him, obviously, but that was how he dealt with it. I didn't always understand the methods he used to protect himself. Self-preservation was so subjective. "Sorry. It just. I don't like that word."

"I'm sorry," he said. He was probably thinking of the incident too. My heart clenched.

"It's okay if he's gay, Dante."

"I know." It was a sigh. "I just want one of us to not be a disappointment."

"Don't say that. Your parents love you."

"I know," he said, again. We got out of the pool not long after that. It was dark. We were shivering. Dante made me wear his shirt, too, which should've been embarrassing but wasn't. I drove us home, streets lit up by only the truck's headlights. It was when we pulled up that he spoke again: "Do you ever think about the Accident?" Which, you know, wasn't very insightful of him. Not when I'd spent so long trying to think of anything else. I told him this. There was silence again. As we got older I began to understand some silences. "I do, a lot," he said. "I think about the fact that you pushed me."

"It's been --"

"I know it's been some time, Ari." He turned to me, eyes all sad. And there it was, the thing I understood least about him. All those emotions. He was just so emotional. His bottom lip was wobbling, and I wanted to tell him to not cry, but that would've made the tears come faster. I just sat there, staring at him. Going numb. "The -- the rules thing? About not talking about it? I didn't like that."

"I know," I said, softly.

"I wanted to talk about it with somebody."

"I know."

"I still think about it. I wish you hadn't done that. But I'm glad you did."

"..."

"I love you, you know?"

"..."

"I  _love_ you. Aristotle Mendoza."

"I love  _you,_ Dante Quintana."

"New rule," he whispered. "We talk about what's bothering us." My throat was dry, so I nodded. I was afraid my voice would crack on anything I tried to say. "I'll start. I'm scared my brother will be gay or he'll resent me for being gay or my parents will decide they like him best because he's not." That was a big statement. I reached out and touched his knee, because I didn't know what else to do. His eyes were shining with tears. I wanted to tell him he didn't need to cry about things like this. Instead I swallowed, and he tilted his head at me, expectant.

"I'm scared you'll get hurt again."

"I'm scared I'm not Mexican enough for you."

That was ridiculous.

"For me?"

"Yeah."

"Dante, I'm scared I'm not Mexican enough for everybody."

"Promise."

"Me?"

"No, the other stupid Mexican I'm seeing." That made him laugh. I kissed his nose, and he wrinkled it. My own boldness kind of shocked me. Then again it might've been due to all the adrenaline in my blood right then. Made someone do stupid things. "Yes. You."  _You only,_ I felt like saying. I'm sure he heard it. He kissed me this time.  _Yes,_ he mouthed into my cheek, my jaw, fingers bunching in my shirt -- _his_ shirt. I tried not to grab the steering wheel like it was a lifeline.  _Yes, yes, yes._ Over and over. He cried, I think. I might've, too. We stumbled into the kitchen and drank a few beers and headed to bed.  

Maybe some things weren't meant to be perfect. Maybe perfect just meant okay. Meant you could keep going like this forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I haven't ever written for A&DDTSOTU before, but I hope this is the first of many. Leave me a comment if you'd like me write more/suggesting what I should write, maybe.


End file.
